Intro: You are listening to the Q-Niverse podcast. Let me just say, before we get started, that today’s episode is being brought to you in part by ColdFusionNow.org who helped facilitate the dialogue you are about to listen to. Today I have with me Andrea Rossi. Mr. Rossi is an inventor and entrepreneur who, for many years, has worked to develop the Energy Catalyzer, also known as the E-Cat – a reactor fueled by nickel and hydrogen that allegedly harnesses “cold fusion”, or low-energy nuclear reactions, on an industrial scale. Mr. Rossi has been working on this technology for well over a decade and has recently partnered with a highly-credible commercial investor to take the technology to the “next level”. A recent third-party analysis of the E-Cat, carried out by a coalition of European professors and engineers over the course of the past year, reports that the technology is in fact producing energy well in excess of any known chemical reaction. Andrea Rossi, thank you for being with me today.

Andrea Rossi: Thank you.

John Maguire: Starting off, can you explain your thoughts and feelings over the past year waiting for the new analysis of the E-Cat? Has this been a tense time for you, or have you been too busy refining the reactor to worry much about it?

Rossi: Basically I am focused on my work which is Research and Development, and direction of the manufacturing of the E-Cat and plant. This has been, as always, a period just of work. For what concerns the report – it is for sure an important report. [It] has been made by a third, independent party. The results are interesting, [and] very problematic, and we are studying these results.

JM: Now, were you worried at all that [analysis/report] might come up with negative results? Did you have any indication over the course of the year? Or were you pretty much in the dark like everyone else?

Rossi: This report is in the hands of the professors that made it.

JM: Sure…fair enough. What do you think the ultimate impact of the report will be? Can it possibly persuade the larger scientific community or other major industrial players beside ELFORSK to get interested in LENR generally speaking, in your opinion?

Rossi: This is difficult to say…this is difficult to say. Honestly, I do not know. But our target is not to convince anybody. Our target is to make a plant that works properly. Now we have finished [with all the tests] and we are focusing exclusively on the market and on the production that we have to set up. This report is no doubt very interesting and we are studying it because, as you probably know, there is a surprising result regarding the Nickel-62 in particular, and we are studying it because we are strongly directed, under a theoretical point of view, to understand these kinds of results that was unexpected. But our main focus remains the operation of industrial plant.

JM: Now you mentioned theory there real quick, so maybe we can talk about that really quick. Do you think that the reaction can be explained within the Standard Model or do you think we’re gonna have to go well beyond that to account for what’s going on, because as you noted there were some strange changes in the powder – which we don’t really have time to get into too much – but can you put it in a theoretical context, or do you any ideas theory wise that you’re able to share?

Rossi: No, we are starting on it. It will take time because the reconciliation is not an easy task. And we are studying with specialists.

JM: You’re working with a team to develop the theory, is that the idea?

Rossi: Yes.

JM: Now getting back to the report. In regards to excess heat, the measured coefficient-of-performance, or COP, came out to be around 3.2-3.6 over a very prolonged period of time. Some experts argue the calorimetry was suitable, while others remain unsatisfied for various reasons. So first, what did you make of the review group’s methodology and excess heat measurements?

Rossi: Well the calculations have been made by the professors. I know that some of them are very well [experienced with] that kind of measurement. They have also [made a core] with manufacturer of thermal chambers. I suppose they know what they did. I want not to enter into this question because I just accept the results [I have been given]. I have nothing to comment about that. About the various opinions [out there] we do not consider them real [objections] because what’s of interest to us, again, is that the plant we have in operation works properly. Honestly we have no more time to lose in this discussion. [Concerning] the COP – you have seen in the report the COP has been calculated in a very conservative way. Every number has been calculated [within] the most conservative margin. Actually, I think [the COP] could be maybe increased but again, this is not a theoretical issue, this is a technological issue that can be seen only at a fixed point in an industrial, operational plant — no more theoretical suppositions.

JM: The new version of the E-Cat that was tested this time had an alumina casing on it. Now this as far as my understanding goes acted as an insulator…

Rossi: It has been described in the report. I don’t want to say anything about that. The report has been very well described [elsewhere] – the casing of the reactor.

JM: You brought up the 1MW plant – how is progress going on that? And to be more specific how is the new design superior to the old version, and how long do you think it will take to get to market or, at the very least, be demonstrated publically for people?

Rossi: Well, yes, the new 1MW plant has gotten a strong evolution with [regard] to the older one — mainly under the reliability point of view; under the industrial point of view. The control system is enormously more sophisticated. Basically the plant is governed by a robot. Nevertheless it will take at least one year of operation in the factory of the customer of Industrial Heat, to whom the plant has been supplied…it will take at least one year before they complete the analysis [and] all possible errors have been adjusted. After this year with the permission of the customer, because industry is not a showroom or a theatre, so we cannot just open access to the public and say, “Alright guys, come and see!” It will not be that simple, but selected visits for a person who has title to that will be open – [but] not before we consider the plant absolutely [finished] under an industrial point of view. I suppose it will take about one year…about one year from now I suppose. But when you are in this field you cannot be sure about the scheduling because you can be sure of one thing now today, and tomorrow discover you were wrong and have to change something. This is the first time – and this is important to underline – this is the first time we had the possibility to see in operation 24-hours-a-day continuously the plant because before we could only operate on it for a couple of days or three before [we encountered] a lot of problems. The [past manufacturing facilities that we installed the old 1MW plant were not in full operations]. There was not a load to supply all the energy to. So now in the real industrial operation/situation we can see all the problems that are generated from this real operation.

JM: Now you say you’ve seen it running longer than a few days can you give some idea of how long one has been running, or how long one has been tested for? Are we talking weeks?

Rossi: You know in our factory the one megawatt plant that had been presented in October 2012 — it worked at that time. Then, we could work with it for some [amount of time], but you cannot put in exercise for long a plant like that if you don’t have a real load and if you do not have a real operation going on.

JM: Can you give us an idea of how many people are working to develop the E-Cat? Obviously you have your hands on it in some capacity, but is this a rather large team or just a small group of engineers?

Rossi: We are working with a complex team where there are specialists for any issue.

JM: Can you give an idea of how many scientists are working on [the project]?

Rossi: I prefer to not answer in detail, but what I can say is that for any single matter, we have a specialist to take care of [that].

JM: Getting a bit more personal,I’m sure people are wondering what exactly has driven you all these years, and what do you hope to ultimately achieve by bringing this technology to the world? How do you hope to be remembered?

Rossi: The first stone has been put in the building so, you know, the first industrial plant, not working in an experimental warehouse, but working in the factory of a customer to produce a profit is already in operation. So this process of industrialization has begun already.

JM: What do you hope to accomplish personally? What drives you to keep pushing this forward?

Rossi: Well, you know, I just go one step at a time. My biggestaspiration now is to make the 1 MW plant perfect, absolutely and totally reliable, with all the defects corrected. This is my aspiration now. After this, I do not know.

JM: Briefly, can you speak on your past work with the now-deceased Professor Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna. I think he might be one of the unsung heroes after the story is told, along with many others of course, but he was one of the pioneers in the nickel-hydrogen work, along with [Francesco] Piantelli and others, most notably Italians. How significant in your opinion were his contributions to the genesis of the E-Cat, your work, and just your general thoughts on him?

Rossi: Focardi has been a strong collaborator with me, mainly in the period between 2007 and 2010. I have been lucky to be helped by him with his strong theoretical preparation. For sure, he has contributed to the development of this work, and we absolutely have to be grateful forever for his precious contribution and he is always present in our memory.

JM: I know he was in a special situation in one sense because he was retired, and though his career wasn’t behind him, he could come out and support controversial work that he might not have been able to do while he was still a teaching professor, and that’s the kind of pressure many academics face in dealing with these new technologies or this new science.And so, we need people like Sergio Focardi, we need people like Hano Essen, like Sven Kullander, who are willing to stick their necks out for new science to discover something new. Without pioneers, without people taking these kind of risks, both economic on your end, and sociologically, say in the scientific community, on the professors’ end.So I wish people were more open-minded [and] would follow their example. I think a lot of the barriers to people understanding this new technology, this new science, is again the academic pushback, so I am always encouraged by these men of integrity, whether they are sure or unsure of what’s going on, they say, “let’s look”, “let’s investigate”. That’s why I’m always in inspired by those kinds of people, and that’s why I brought him up.

Rossi: Yes, I agree with you.

JM: I know you don’t have a lot of time today. We appreciate all the time you afforded to us. I know there are things you can talk about, and things you cannot talk about. So before we go our separate ways, do you have any parting thoughts? Any words of wisdom or anything you think is appropriate?

Rossi: What I can say is that, at this point, we have to focus on the industrial plant in operation, because at this point in the story we are in a situation similar to the one at the dawn of the computers. At the very beginning it was important to have the theoretical discussion on microchips, etcetera, but at a certain point, the development, and the importance of the computer, has been determined by the market, not by the scientific community.

JM: Absolutely. Thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to speak to us.

Rossi: Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure and an honor to be with you today.

Conclusion: That does it for today’s episode. Thanks again to Andrea Rossi, Ruby Carat at Cold Fusion Now.org, and thanks to you for listening. Take care, and stay tuned for more episodes in the near future.

Apparently a COP of 3.2-3.6 over a 32 day period and isotopic change in nickel and lithium was observed.

“In summary, the performance of the E-Cat reactor is remarkable. We have a device giving heat energy compatible with nuclear transformations, but it operates at low energy and gives neither nuclear radioactive waste nor emits radiation. From basic general knowledge in nuclear physics this should not be possible. Nevertheless we have to relate to the fact that the experimental results from our test show heat production beyond chemical burning, and that the E-Cat fuel undergoes nuclear transformations. It is certainly most unsatisfying that these results so far have no convincing theoretical explanation, but the experimental results cannot be dismissed or ignored just because of lack of theoretical understanding.”

The report is entitled “Observation of Abundant Heat Production From a Reactor Device and of Isotopic Changes in the Fuel” and is written by Giuseppe Levi, Evelyn Foschi, Bo Höistad, Roland Pettersson, Lars Tegnér and Hanno Essén, all of whom also wrote an earlier third party report on the E-Cat.

A fair critique, especially of the calorimetric measuring, can be found here.

Andrea Rossi has recently amended his patent application in the U.S. This comes a few months after the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a “non-final rejection” of Andrea Rossi’s patent for the following stated reasons:

“The specification is objected to as inoperable. Specifically there is no evidence in the corpus of nuclear science to substantiate the claim that nickel will spontaneously ionize hydrogen gas and thereafter “absorb” the resulting proton…”

Brillouin has a patent in China and has filed with U.S., EU, Japan and India. India reportedly slapped a secrecy order on their application. Like the U.S., Japan is taking a firm stance and requiring reliable, independent proof.

Tom Darden, CEO of Cherokee Investment Partners and Chairman of Industrial Heat, LLC was present at the opening ceremony held on April 16, 2014. Industrial Heat, LLC is the company that acquired the rights to Andrea Rossi’s purported low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology, the Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat).

Darden apparently reported research findings at the meeting, that “final report of the pilot phase of the nickel reaction showed low temperature reaction of nickel is currently the lowest cost power generation technology and abundant raw material resources, alternative energy technologies.”

China has been in the news recently as poising itself to be an innovator in the alternative energy sector. As part of a policy shift, the Chinese government is implementing carbon trading, capping energy consumption, resource taxes, new emissions controls and regional coal consumption caps.

In possibly unrelated news, the commodity price of nickel has surged this year with prices rising more than 30% after Indonesia banned the export of nickel ore in January. Buyers in China have been scrambling to secure material for their processing plants, as speculators have rushed in to the market.

Industrial Heat LLC, a North Carolina company put out a press release today announcing they had acquired the rights to Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat, and were working on plans to commercialize the technology.

IH CEO JT Vaughn stated, “The world needs a new, clean and efficient energy source. Such a technology would raise the standard of living in developing countries and reduce the environmental impact of producing energy,”

The press release says that IH was exploring working with industries, universities and NGOs to help develop and spread the technology. Tom Darden, who co-founded Cherokee Investment Partners, a series of private equity funds specializing in cleaning up pollution, is a founding investor in Industrial Heat.

Vaughn, who is also a senior analyst at Cherokee, confirmed through a press release that IH has acquired the rights to Rossi’s LENR device after a committee of independent European scientists concluded after multiple days of testing at Rossi’s facilities that the device worked.

China has been in the news recently as poising itself to be an innovator in the alternative energy sector. As part of a policy shift, the Chinese government is implementing carbon trading, capping energy consumption, resource taxes, new emissions controls and regional coal consumption caps.

Internet rumors have Cherokee Investment Partners, with multiple Chinese connections, and their subsidiary Industrial Heat LLC, as the possible U.S. partner working with Andrea Rossi and his E-Cat technology.

Brillouin Energy, whom has a LENR patent in China, recently signed a licensing agreement with a firm in South Korea. Perhaps the Pacific Rim and China are embracing the possibilities of LENR and may lead the way in developing this technology.

In an interesting paper by Magdi Ragheb, the author discusses the various mechanisms whereby deuteron disintegration in condensed matter through photonuclear and wave polarization reactions aid in the source of neutrons leading to the apparent transmutations being proffered as the source of anomalous heat in LENR events.

The author relies heavily on the Oppenheimer–Phillips process or strip reaction which is a type of deuteron-induced nuclear reaction. In this process the neutron half of an energetic deuteron (a stable isotope of hydrogen with one proton and one neutron) fuses with a target nucleus, transmuting the target to a heavier isotope while ejecting a proton.

Since we last wrote, there continues to be important developments. The rest of the world is waking up that L.E.N.R. is serious. A recent Forbes article emphasized the maturing of the technology.

And OilPrice.com journalist Brian Westenhaus thinks the industry may have reached the turning point and perhaps the last stages before widespread acceptance. This is further supported by an influx of universities in the US and afield that are now including LENR or Cold Fusion studies in their syllabus.

The 18th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF-18) held last month also provided substantial details of the technology along with deepening understanding of the physics behind it. In practice no-one is yet able to match the COP that Rossi has attained: COP=6, but we hope that all parties do succeed because there is much need for more efficient and environmentally friendly energy sources.

Our focus has continued to be on working with interested parties, discussing their needs and recommending solutions. The following diagram shows the wide applicability of the Rossi E-Cat and Hot-Cat.

Many companies around the globe and in this region are starting to focus on co- and tri- generation, the situation where one heat source is used over and over again. To this end the actual effective COP can be much higher than 6, if one can re-use the heat. A typical co-generation use could be using the initial heat for a food manufacturing process, and the waste heat for a chilling/refrigeration process.

Primary Application: Blanching. For this, typically they would be using grid electricity, or Gas. With the E-Cat they would enjoy a COP of 6 (i.e. for every unit of energy previously used, now they can consume just 1/6th of that energy, reducing their bill proportionately). Once used the energy they have consumed is typically wasted.

Secondary Application: By coupling the blanching process and its waste heat, to a chiller system, the company can convert this waste heat into chilling, allowing operation of cold rooms for holding vegetables, at almost no additional energy cost. Assuming a 70% efficiency on this leg, the company might be able to get an additional 50% re-use of the energy (allowing for inefficiencies).

Now the company may also consider that there is a third use for the same energy – output from the Chiller is hot water (approximately 50-70 degrees C). This is ideal for general use in bathrooms and kitchens for washing and cleaning.

Notice from the example table above, that there is substantial improvement of the facility’s energy use. Using the E-Cat, the company may be able to achieve upwards of 10 times the value of the input energy. (note this is a generalized example. Engineers will be able to estimate specific applications which depend on environmental conditions and other factors).

E-Cat Australia and South Asia is working with manufacturers and distributors of allied equipment to assist our clients get additional benefit when they implement an E-Cat or Hot-Cat.